Antebellum Transportation

With the growth of settlement and counties, western Virginians
demanded better better services and internal improvements from the
state of Virginia. Transportation was a critical concern as
isolated western Virginians needed improved roads and waterways.
However, the rivers and streams proved to be unpredictable,
generally unnavigable due to low water in the summer, ice in the
winter, and flooding in every season. As early as 1785, George
Washington had planned a canal creating a navigable route
connecting the Chesapeake Bay with the Ohio River. The Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal finally reached Harpers Ferry in 1833 and ended at
Cumberland in 1850, never intersecting the Ohio River. A similar
plan to join the James River with the Kanawha River by canal also
failed.

Berkeley Springs resident James Rumsey eliminated some of these
problems with the invention of a steam-powered boat, first
demonstrated at Shepherdstown in 1787. The success of Robert
Fulton's steamboat in New York in 1807 made water transportation
the fastest and most inexpensive form of sending goods to
market.

Roads, often treacherous, were the most common form of
transportation. By the end of the eighteenth century, the state had
constructed and improved routes, connecting many parts of western
Virginia. These roads often followed old Native American and
pioneer trails and eventually became the routes of modern highways
and interstates. In 1790, the Kanawha Turnpike, or Midland Trail
extended to the Kanawha River, reaching the Guyandotte River by
1800, today's U. S. Highway 60. In 1818, the National Road, which
became U. S. Highway 40, connected Cumberland with Wheeling. In
1838, the Northwestern Turnpike was completed from Winchester to
Parkersburg, marking the route of present-day U. S. Highway 50.

Railroads did not extend beyond the mountains until the 1850s
and did not play a major role in economic development until the end
of the Civil War. The one exception to this was the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad, which reached Wheeling in January 1853, providing an
economic boost. The long-awaited B&O had reached Harpers Ferry
in 1834, causing an economic boom in a town where the government
armory had previously been the primary employer. Legal
complications continually delayed its extension. Originally, the
Virginia General Assembly prevented the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
Company from constructing its track beyond Cumberland into western
Virginia because it feared eastern Virginia would lose its western
markets to the city of Baltimore. In 1847, western Virginian
representatives forced the state to consent to extending the track
to a point on the Ohio River several miles south of Wheeling.

The B&O employed cheap labor, often Irish immigrants, to
complete construction of the track. During this same period,
thousands of immigrants from Europe as well as people from
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York settled in western Virginia,
creating a heterogeneous population of English, Germans, Irish, and
Scots, yet the eastern Virginia population remained primarily
English and African American.